Flawed Motivators of Teamwork

Management activities and cultural elements that reduce the effectiveness of teams

Introduction
Motivators in business have long been a topic of conversation at conferences and in the halls of management consulting practices. Lately these management motivation methods have been called into question for the unseen impacts they have on business (Blanchard, 1994). This concern not only focuses on the formal motivators like salary, pay-for-performance bonuses and public recognition, but it also includes the quieter and more subtle incentives. One common act is rewarding individuals for heroically going “beyond the call-of-duty” to rescue a project or solve a problem. What does this special treatment encourage and what does silence show?

There have been multitudes of books written on the psychology of motivation. This work will concentrate specifically on how flawed motivators work to reduce the effectiveness of teams. Effectively building teams in an organization requires more that just one person. It requires the entire organization. The right culture in an organization builds effective teams (Jackson). It is the premise of this work that “team friendly” cultures start with “team friendly” motivators. Too often in business we demand team work but encourage individualism. Our incentives are to the individual but deep down we understand that we can accomplish more through teamwork.

In many cases managers that reward non-“team friendly” behavior and encourage individualism over teamwork are unaware of their follies. They use management practices common to a past era, which focused on controlling behavior not empowering teams. For teamwork to flourish these flawed motivators must be dismissed and new ones learned.

10 Flawed motivators
Over the course of many years in industry and consulting, the author has encountered several frequently occurring flawed motivators. Each of these focuses on the individual or the department instead of the organization and the team. To follow is a list of the top 10 flawed motivators. It includes a description of each motivator and the common consequences that result from its use in the workplace. The list is ordered according to the frequency with which these motivators are found in the workplace. Obviously organizational culture and other factors can influence the extent to which these consequences affect teamwork. In some cases very little consequence to teamwork is seen because the greater organizational culture is “team friendly”. Conversely, organizations with poor team cultures will see much more extensive consequences.
 
Flawed Motivator #1 -- Focus on individual tasks
Description: The workplace has seen dramatic increases in competitive pressures and stress levels over the past decade. Employees are pushed harder than ever before to deliver quality results in shorter timeframes. To achieve these results many project and functional managers have seen success driving team members to deliver on individual tasks.

Common Consequences: In some circles this motivator is seen as necessary and encouraged as good management practice. Nevertheless, driving to individual tasks can have dire consequences for teams (Kendall & Rollins, 2003). A project is made up of a chain of tasks that together allow a team to finish a project at a specified date for a specified cost. Each task in that chain has a certain probability of finishing on time. Many tasks will finish late and, statistically speaking, about the same number of tasks should finish early. Driving individuals to complete individual tasks on time causes them to lose site of the team goals and teamwork necessary for project success. Team members must work closely together as they traverse this project chain, but instead they are motivated to look out for themselves first. Such individualism thwarts the effectiveness of teams.

Flawed Motivator #2 -- Reward individual heroic efforts
Description: As the pace of business increases, managers seek better methods to increase the velocity of work. One trap that managers often fall into with this goal in mind is to reward individual heroes for individual effort.

Common Consequences: Certainly there are times when rewarding individuals is appropriate, but in many cases such rewards circumvent larger team and organizational goals (Blann, 1999), (Reich, 1987). Individual heroism often exists in situations where planning or process has been poorly executed or dismissed altogether and individuals must step up and bailout the organization. Openly rewarding bailout efforts tends to legitimize the lack of planning or process and encourage individual effort. The importance of repeatable process is lessened within the organization and teamwork is diminished.
 
Flawed Motivator #3 -- Reward individual knowledge
Description: Similar to rewarding the heroism of individuals, managers often reward individual knowledge. This is not to say that having intelligent, knowledgeable individuals is not important, but these rewards should happen within a team environment.

Common Consequences: While this motivator is similar to the previous one, the consequences are quite different. Rewarding the knowledge of individuals for knowledge sake occurs at a terrible cost (KCS). Employees who are knowledgeable and frequently rewarded for their knowledge tend to be very hard to work with in a team environment because they see themselves as being above the intelligence of the rest of the team. Additionally, such employees have a tendency to become “knowledge empire builders”, hording information to improve their standing with management and to promote their own job security. All of these actions undermine teamwork and longer-term organizational goals.

Flawed Motivators #4 – Setting arbitrary due dates on projects
Description: A common practice in organizations, especially those with controlling cultures, is for project sponsors or other high-ranking stakeholders to set arbitrary project completion dates without feedback from the team in determining what it would take to complete the effort.

Common Consequences: Underlying any action of this nature that circumvents the knowledge and experience of the team is a subtle, often hidden premise that the team is not capable of making important decisions on its own. In the case of this particular motivator, the manager setting the date is in essence telling the team that they are not competent to establish the necessary checks and balances and velocity required for the project to succeed. It suggests that those closest to the effort, chosen for their expertise in completing similar work, are unqualified to make such decisions on their own. A lack of trust in the team from organizational management does nothing but stifle the effectiveness of teams.

Flawed Motivator #5 -- Functional managers stepping in to “rescue” projects
Description: When troubles arise within a team, a functional manager, usually a sponsor or related manager, engages the team with the purpose of rescuing them and leading the team back on track.

Common Consequences: Similar to the previous motivator, this one calls into question the abilities of the team. The functional manager is telling the team, usually in not so many words, that the team does not have the skills and ability to solve their own problems and to be successful. This motivator often exists in organizations with strong departmental silos. Because of the culture such organizations promote, the functional manager sees his or her department as a failure when there is a team setback. Regardless of the reasons, such actions can have dire effects on teams, especially cross-functional ones.
 
Flawed Motivator #6 – Organizations and cultures with strong and competing silos
Description: Many organizations are set up, whether by design or as a by-product of other cultural elements, with strong department silos. In these organizations departments are pitted against each other to compete for monies, people, and the ear of higher management.

Common Consequences: Organizations structured in this manner tend to create cultures that minimize the value of teamwork (Albreicht, 2002). When cross-functional teams exist in this environment, different and often competing goals and objectives can pit team members against each other to meet their own needs. The idea of a “team” becomes a delusion. These contentious teams are saying, in essence, that individual department’s goals are more important than the team and organizational ones. Organizations of this nature usually exhibit many of the other flawed motivators because functional managers attempt to minimize the accountability of the team members from their department and shift blame, when problems arise, to team members from other departments.

Flawed Motivator #7 -- Constantly changing teams
Description: Changing priorities and resourcing needs often results in teams with constantly changing memberships.

Common Consequences: When team members are dropped into a team without an understanding of the team’s goals and objectives, they struggle to see its value and understand their part. They become an individual working with a team, not a member of the team. When a new team member enters a team in mid-stream, time must be taken to educate the member regarding the history of the team and the decisions that have been made. The new team member must understand that the team is moving forward and is not required to review and rehash prior decisions.

Each time the members of a team change, the team dynamics change. The team must reestablish itself and move on. Teams go through 5 main stages of development: forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning.  When the team changes it must begin these stages anew (DeJanasz, 2002). Constantly changing teams mean that the group will never reach the performing stage of development and its greatest effectiveness.

Flawed Motivator #8 -- Viewing teams as group of interchangeable parts
Description: Since early in the industrial revolution, some managers have viewed employees as interchangeable resources used to complete a task.

Common Consequences: While it is not advised to reward individual effort for individual actions, it is vital to the success of teams that managers do not fall into the trap of viewing a team as pieces that can be removed and replaced at will. Tom Peters made this point when he said that the “real trick in building a team is to have 25 individual stars on it” (Peters, 1994). Tom was not suggesting that the “individual stars” should work independently, but that teams should be built based on skills and expertise as well as their ability to work as a cohesive group. Each member of the team is critical to its success. Any view or action that undermines this will undermine the effectiveness of the team.

Flawed Motivator #9 -- Holding individuals accountable to managers rather than team
Description: A common practice in strongly siloed organizations is functional managers that view team failure or setbacks as a failure within their own department. A result of this view is managers that think they must hold their own people, working on teams, individually accountable.

Common Consequences: While on the surface this motivator doesn’t seem to have negative consequences, in reality it reduces the effectiveness of teams. Like focusing on individual tasks, this motivator causes individuals to consider themselves before their team. The result is a cat-and-mouse game where individuals try to keep both the functional and team manager’s happy, even when there are competing goals in the mix. Such actions circumvent the duties of team management and ultimately the ability of the team to govern itself effectively.

Flawed Motivator #10 -- Teams without ownership of problem being solved
Description: Because of the velocity of business coupled with a lack of required resources, whole teams or members of teams are added after the research and planning of an effort have been completed.

Common Consequences: To be effective, team members must own the problem the team is solving. For teams to have ownership they must have members that feel real pain from the problems being solved and a stake in the solution (Javitch, 2003). Additionally, each team member must understand and value the goals and objectives of the team. Without ownership of the problem, individual team members or the entire team will struggle to appreciate the work being done and may become cynical of its purposes. These consequences demoralize the team and reduce its effectiveness.

Making the change
These 10 flawed motivators will consistently undermine the work of teams and the goals of organizations to build and nurture teamwork. Culture and management style are a common thread in organizations that encounter these motivators (Heathfield). Because of this, change will take time. Cultural change and management training must commence and teams must learn how to be effective. In many organizations trust has been lost and political barriers have been established. Removing the barriers and reestablishing trust will not happen overnight.

In any event, managers must begin to view teams as a mechanism to meet department and organizational goals and take steps to encourage their effectiveness. Cultures that empower teams to take initiative and use their skills and expertise to execute and make critical decisions will reap the rewards of improved efficiency and better quality products and services.

References
Albreicht, K. (2002). The Power of Minds at Work: Organizational Intelligence in Action, AMA
Blanchard, K. (1994, January 1994). Punished by poor management. Incentive
Blann, D.R. The Manufacturing Gale, Marshall Institute, Inc.
DeJanasz, S.C. Dowd, K.O., & Schneider, B.Z. (2001). Interpersonal Skills in Organizations. New York: McGraw-Hill. Pg. 315
Heathfield, S. How to Build a Teamwork Culture: Do the Hard Stuff. About.com
Jackson, I. The Communicating Executive. Executive Management Solutions. Pg. 2
Javitch, D.G. (2003, May 2003). How to Foster Effective Teamwork. Entrepreneur.com
Kendall, G. L., Rollins, S. C. (2003). Advanced Project Portfolio Management and the PMO. J. Ross Publishing. Pg. 274
Knowledge Centered Support, Version 3 (KCS). Consortium For Service Innovation. Pg. 8
Peters, Tom. (1994). The Pursuit of WOW. Vintage Books, USA
Reich, R. (1987, May-June 1987). Entrepreneurship Reconsidered, The Team as Hero. The Harvard Business Review